


sat at the floor of the sea

by gendernoncompliant



Category: Haven (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Grief/Mourning, Introspection, M/M, Post-Canon, Spoilers, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:22:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25251562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gendernoncompliant/pseuds/gendernoncompliant
Summary: No one has to convince Dwight to go back to therapy. By the time Gloria suggests it, he’s been in sessions for weeks.
Relationships: Duke Crocker/Dwight Hendrickson
Comments: 13
Kudos: 19





	sat at the floor of the sea

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song "Ship in a Bottle" by Steffan Argus, which always gets me in my Duke feelings. This fic is a few degrees removed from my usual work, but I wanted to try something new. I hope you like it!

When they discharged him from the Army, Dwight spent years feeling like peacetime was the strangest and least familiar part of war. He hadn’t realized just how thoroughly he’d allowed Haven to become his new war until after they won it.

Without the troubles, Haven doesn’t feel quite like Haven anymore. It feels like a held breath. Like a glass on the edge of a table. Like a bubble about to pop. He can’t seem to relax.

Dwight doesn’t understand the supernatural machinations that brought Lizzie back into his life again, not really. He's grateful for them—every damn day, he’s grateful. But a part of him isn’t quite convinced that she’s real, yet. Again, the held breath. The shoe waiting to drop. He keeps having dreams where he wakes up and she’s gone again.

No one has to convince him to go back to therapy. By the time Gloria suggests it, he’s been in sessions for weeks.

As much as he’s lied for this town, about this town, to this town, he doesn’t know how to lie about Lizzie. He talks around her, instead—leaves out important words like _“died”_ and replaces them with softer, less specific ones like _“got hurt”_ and _“went away”_.

When the therapist talks about making space for grief, she means the grief of missing out on part of Lizzie’s childhood. She doesn’t know how apt the metaphor truly is. He can’t tell her. Eventually, he stops talking about Lizzie in his sessions. In the end, his joy outweighs his grief.

He keeps coming back to Duke.

> _My therapist thinks that I can’t move on because there was too much left unsaid.  
>  She’s good people. Works out of Bangor. They don’t believe in the troubles, there.  
>  I’m used to lying about the troubles. I don’t think you’re supposed to lie to your therapist._

Dwight’s been a fixer twice as long as he was a soldier. When the time comes to start putting Haven back together again, he knows where he belongs. He patches roofs, replaces fences, repaves sidewalks. It’s always been a comfort, working with his hands. He feels again like a version of himself he lost sight of.

The world makes sense again.

He has his daughter back. He has a job where he rebuilds broken things and no one takes orders from him and it’s good. It’s quiet. For the first time in decades, he doesn’t feel guilty for loving the quiet.

> _VA put me in therapy after I got discharged. He wasn’t a bad shrink.  
>  I didn’t know about the troubles, yet. I told him how the bullets all turned in mid-air,  
>  even the ones that weren’t aimed at me. He said,  
>  “I’m sure it felt that way.”_

Nathan doesn’t talk to him about Duke.

Dwight isn’t entirely sure how much about the two of them Nathan even knows. He keeps it that way. An unspoken thing. In a lifetime of service, it feels good to keep something for himself.

Before everything went to hell, Dwight made the fool mistake of letting himself get _hopeful_.

When things fell apart with Lizzie’s mother, he’d been sure he’d never let another person that close to him ever again. Charlotte only reinforced the impulse, in the end. Love never did him any favors.

Duke snuck up on him. Dwight didn’t know it was love until there was nothing else it could have been. No other word ran deep enough.

One kiss was all they ever got. One kiss before Croatoan crawled inside Duke’s head and there was no turning back.

> _I told my therapist I was the last person to see you alive. That’s almost true, technically.  
>  She said writing to you might give me a sense of closure, but there isn’t any closure.  
>  You’re just dead. _
> 
> _Don’t worry, you’re not my first. I enlisted. I’m used to it._

He tells his therapist that Duke was sick. He tells her it was sudden. He tells her he wasn’t able to be there, in those last moments. It’s less of a lie and more of a metaphor. A framing device for a tragedy for which there is no context.

She asks him if he resents not being there when the “doctors” made the decision.

But he’s grateful, in some ways. Forgiving Nathan turns out to be easier than forgiving himself.

And he knows—he knows—that no amount of love would have stopped him from doing what needed to be done. At least he doesn’t have to live with that.

Duke’s sacrifice doesn’t fit neatly into the illness metaphor, but he makes do. His therapist asks gentle, pointed questions. She knows he’s hiding something.

It’s comical, really, just how much.

> _It feels pathetic to tell a dead man that I loved him in a letter.  
>  I couldn’t even say it to your ghost.  
>  You were brave, Duke.  
>  You sacrificed more than anyone had any right to ask from you.  
>  I don’t think you’d want to be loved for that, though.  
>  Maybe I’m wrong. But you were more to me than what you had to give._

Dwight fills an old whiskey bottle full of stones. The usual message in a bottle cliché might actually wash up somewhere. He knows where this one is going.

He watches Lizzie climb onto the school bus. He sits at his kitchen table and finishes his coffee, the bottle sat in front of him like a centerpiece. Idly, he wonders if Duke would like the whiskey.

At 10AM, he takes a skiff out onto the horizon and gives his message to the deep.

He sits a long time with the engine idled to a buzz behind him. Watching the water kiss the hull, he looks inside himself and finds the silence of his own head unfamiliar and all encompassing.

He never spoke at Duke’s funeral. Never felt like he had the right words. Hours of therapy and a letter to the dead later, and words still fail him.

The sunlight cuts through the cold. Out on the water, he feels closer to Duke than he has since the day they lost him.

After a long time, he manages a quiet, “Thank you, Duke.” It isn’t enough.

> _You built Haven this future. You deserved to live to see it._


End file.
